Vigilance is the Price of Freedom

Vigilance is the Price of Freedom

Assalamu ‘Alaikum,

Just sharing what I’m reading

Excerpt from “THE END OF MONEY AND THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION” by Thomas H Greco, Jr. (pp 21 & 22)  (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont) 

“Laurence Victor goes so far as to say, there are two alternative modes for coordinating activity so as to accomplish what only many hands in coordinated activity could accomplish. The egalitarian mode involves voluntary cooperation to achieve requisite coordination. An exemplar mode might be a tribe’s collective effort in gathering materials and constructing a long house. The egalitarian mode can have leaders or managers, as roles to assist in coordination. Ideally each person contributes as to their existing competencies and interests - and all essential roles are covered. The elitist mode involves forced labor in a top down command structure to achieve coordination ( and even to get persons to act as demanded). The force could be facilitated by slavery or wages, both essential for survival in a prevailing situation. Once a people settled into an elitist mode, it must be defended by force and the indoctrination of labor to accept their status.

For that reason, any excuse for concentrating power and curtailing the personal rights and freedoms to which all are entitled, even national defense or a “war on terror,” must be viewed with suspicion – for as H.L. Mencken observed more than 70 years ago, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” The real hobgoblins, often created by government itself, can be effectively addressed only by responsible citizenry acting together from its community based.

Law, by itself, is incapable of restraining the behaviour of the addict, for addiction creates imperatives that are stronger than the inhibitions induced by law. But, beyond that, power addicts’ need for ever more power leads them to seek ways to control the very process by which laws are made, changed and adjudicated. While the separation of governmental powers into executive, legislative, and judiciary functions was intended to offer some assurance of pluralism and impartiality, the ever- widening socioeconomic differences have the effect of drawing these functions together into the hands of the power elites whose members possess shared interests that are typically antagonistic to those of the masses who comprise the rest of society. As legal constraints upon concentrated power are gradually nullified, government becomes a weapon against freedom, and the ruling class tighten its grip. The people must be ever watchful for the telltale signs of creeping totalitarianism – government secrecy, stonewalling, obfuscation, classified information, abuse of prisoners, surveillance of citizens, harassment of dissenters, appeals to national security and executive privilege.

It is said that “ the price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” but it cannot end there – vigilance is but the beginning of freedom. The acquisition and preservation of freedom require, in addition, responsible civic action. An informed, organized, and politically active citizenry is the only kind that has any chance of remaining free.”